An Inductive Approach to Language Teaching

“Using an Upside Down Lesson Plan”

David Deubelbeiss
http://setiteachers.ning.com

Teachers teach as they’ve been taught. This one salient fact is a significant barrier in
getting teachers to change their classroom practices. As students, we sit through 1,000s of
hours of classes, watching, monitoring, assessing our teachers. This compares unfavorably
with the hours spent on teacher training or professional development. Our teaching
methods reflect our own educational upbringing and experiences as students.

Most teachers who don’t receive explicit and formal TEFL teacher training (and many who
do), will enter the classroom and start “explaining”. By default the teacher is seen as “a
power figure” and as “all knowing”. Most teachers fall into a deductive approach to
language teaching – Explain, Practice and then if time remains, “play” with language.
Students then get too little time actually producing language and using it in a meaningful
fashion.

In an EFL context – students need more time producing language, whether oral or written.
This is especially true in Asia where students have an strong affective filter and fear of
producing language.

One way to force oneself as a teacher to allow students more time speaking and
communicating is to turn the lesson plan upside down. Essentially, you are forcing oneself
into using an inductive approach but still keeping explanation and explicit teaching within
the lesson BUT at the end. The teacher is also skillfully getting students to practice the
language objectives without explicitly outlining them.
This model has several benefits that are immediately apparent;

1) The teacher starts with what the students already know. If the students are competent in
whatever the objective is, then the lesson can be adjusted.

2) Students are engaged immediately. Usually, lessons have a warm- up but often it is an
“add on” with no real relevance to the main content of the lesson. Students just “bear with
it”, waiting for the activity. By “diving in” first, the students are immediately engaged with
a task, an activity etc…. The brain is lit quickly and effectively.

3) “Output” is given its proper place in the language learning hierarchy (Swain, 1995).
Language is a skill and requires a lot of time “doing” and less “thinking” about language.

4) Learner autonomy. The goal of us language teachers should be to motivate students to

be responsible for their own learning. This approach is more student centred and through
discovery, let’s the student “self-learn”. Cooperative learning is stressed and given
precedence.

By using an “upside – down approach” to our lesson delivery, we ensure students are more
motivated and active. This can only benefit our classrooms.

Let’s Compare the two approaches using the Simple Past Tense as the lesson
objective.

A Traditional Lesson Plan The Upside Down Version

Teacher explains how to form the past
simple tense, regular and irregular forms.
Prompting students for replies. “What did
you do today?”
The students practice pronouncing the
t/d/id regular forms and fill out a
worksheet with the appropriate past verb.
Students tell a story using the past simple
tense, based on a storyboard with pictures
of daily actions.
The students are given a storyboard
detailing daily actions and asked to talk
about it.
The teacher notes what was difficult for the
students. Exercises are given as needed or
this is simply eliminated and another
storyboard is given to pairs.
The teacher reviews the lesson. Students
are requested to show the class how the
past tense is formed and pronounced.

Swain, M. (1995) Three functions of output in second language learning. In Cook, G. and
Seidelhofer, B. (Eds.) Principle and Practice in Applied Linguistics: Studies in Honor of
H.G. Widdowson, pp. 125-144. Oxford: Oxford University Press.